David Blaine to stand in a million volts of electric currents

David Blaine, the US magician will stand for three days and nights in the middle of a million volts of fiery electric currents for his latest stunt.

On Tuesday, Blaine donned his suit and clambered on top of a much smaller test coilPhoto: Mike Segar/REUTERS

9:19PM BST 02 Oct 2012

Blaine, 39, has previously been buried alive, frozen in an ice cube, trapped in a glass box for a week, and submerged underwater. He says his latest feat, standing on a pillar in New York in what amounts to the middle of a personal lightning storm, will take him to new limits of endurance.

"No food. Standing – no sitting. No rest," he said.

That would finish most people off. But Blaine will do all this while standing in the middle of the electric storm protected only by a stainless steel suit of chain mail, iron soled boots and a cage-like helmet.

The outfit is designed to allow the fierce currents to dance over his body, without ever touching his skin.

The helmet is open so that he can drink water through a tube, but a security team will be watching carefully that he never pokes one of his chain mail-clad fingers onto his face.

"If I start to hallucinate, which I will, ... if I go to itch my face, that's it – it's getting zapped by a lot of electricity," he said.

He will be standing on top of a 20-foot column surrounded by seven metallic orbs called tesla coils that will stream the electricity. For the first time of his many public stunts, Blaine will have the performance streamed live on the internet.

The public will be able to participate even more intimately by playing with the controls for the tesla coils, turning them up or down on Ultrabook laptops provided by Blaine's sponsor, Intel. In addition to the Manhattan site, there'll be locations with Ultrabooks set up in Beijing, London, Sydney and Tokyo.

On Tuesday, Blaine donned his suit and clambered on top of a much smaller test coil. When a technician threw the switch, spidery blue lines of electric current shot up Blaine's suit and out of his gloved hands and head.

At the unusual press conference, journalists were issued earplugs to deal with the roar of the current and asked to move back out of what a technician called "the zap zone."